A funny thing happens when you are the two loudest, most “arrogant” kids in the paddock: you accidentally alienate everyone else, until you only have each other left.
The realization hit them on a freezing, miserable Tuesday evening. They had sneaked out of the track garage to buy a cheap, greasy pizza from the shop down the street, completely ignoring the track manager’s strict warning that they needed to pack up their tires before the storm hit.
They had been naughty. And the universe punished them instantly.
The moment they stepped out of the pizza shop, boxes clutched in their hands, the sky didn’t just rain—it dumped. It was a torrential, icy downpour that turned the asphalt into a river within seconds. To make matters worse, the track manager and the older kids drove past them in a team van, saw them standing under the pizza shop awning, and deliberately rolled up the windows. No one was offering them an umbrella.
“Ha! Serves you right, brats!” one of the older boys yelled through the glass, laughing as the van splashed through a puddle and disappeared down the road.
“Hey! Come back! You absolute villains!!” Jisung shrieked, waving a fist at the retreating taillights. He turned back to the brick wall, shivering violently as the freezing wind whipped at his face. “No way. Assholes! We’re going to freeze to death. My pizza is going to get soggy.”
Hyunjin didn’t look upset at all. In fact, a slow, obnoxious grin began to spread across his face, his eyes lighting up with that wild, reckless determination he usually saved for the track.
Jisung caught sight of that look and immediately took a step back, his eyes widening in pure horror. “Oh, HELL no. Hyunjina. No. Absolutely not.”
“Think about it, Han,” Hyunjin said, his voice rising over the roar of the thunder.
“I am not getting soaked and catching a fever just because of—“
“Aish, come on! We can share the jacket!” Hyunjin interrupted, already unzipping his massive, oversized team coat. It was the big, puffy, ridiculous long-padded jacket that looked like a wearable sleeping bag on his skinny frame.
Jisung stared at him like he had lost his mind. “The stupid fat jacket?! Hwang, we are still going to get wet! That’s not a tent!”
But Hyunjin was already moving. He yanked the heavy fabric up over his head like a makeshift canopy, stepping aggressively close to Jisung and forcing him under the nylon roof. Before Jisung could protest, Hyunjin grabbed Jisung’s free hand and forced him to grip the edge of the material.
“Hold it tight so the wind doesn’t catch it,” Hyunjin ordered, his grin splitting his face in half.
“Hyunjin, this is a TERRIBLE plan—“
“On the count of three,” Hyunjin announced, his knees bending as he braced himself on the slippery sidewalk.
“No no no!! No way!” Jisung panicked, clutching his pizza box to his chest with one yand while desperately holding onto the wet jacket with the other. “Hyunjin, this isn’t the Grand Prix!! I will actually kill you!! My shoes aren’t waterproof, I will literally—“
“One!” Hyunjin shouted, his eyes locked on the blurry lights of the garage down the road
“STOP COUNTING!! Hwang Hyunjin, I am ordering you as your superior teammate to stop—“
“Two..!”
“I WILL FORCE YOU TO CLEAN MY KART FOR A MONTH I SWEAR TO GOD—“
“Three!!!!”
Hyunjin took off like a rocket launched from the grid.
“AAAAYGAHAHAA!!” Jisung let out a high-pitcher, strangled shriek as he was violently yanked forward into the curtain of the freezing rain.
They ran like absolute lunatics down the flooded sidewalk, completely synchronized but yelling at the top of their lungs. The giant, fluffy jacket flapped wildly above them like a broken parachute, barely keeping the rain off their heads while the bottom of it soaked up muddy puddle water.
“YOU ARE CRAZY! YOU ARE ACTUALLY AN INSANE PERSON!!” Jisung screamed, his lungs burning from the cold air, his wet sneakers slapping loudly against the pavement. But despite the terror, a wild, breathless laugh was bubbling up in his throat.
“YOU SAID SPEED IS EVERYTHING, HAN! DON’T DROP THE PIZZA!” Hyunjin yelled back, his long legs eating up the distance, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
They bolted through the garage doors, skidding across the concrete floor in a messy pile of wet limbs, dripping fabric, and slightly crushed pizza boxes. They slammed into a stack of spare tires, panting, gasping for air, and absolutely DRENCHED from the waist down.
For a second, there was silence as they caught their breath.
Then, Jisung looked down at his soaked shoes, looked up at Hyunjin’s completely ruined, dripping hair, and let out a loud, obnoxious roar of laughter that echoed off the metal rafters. Hyunjin fell backward onto the tires, pointing at Jisung’s red face and laughing just as loud.
A total mess. Supposedly, they didn’t need the team van, they didn’t need an umbrella, and they definitely didn’t need anyone else.
They had just become a team of two.
#20 — Let’s Get into the Same Team
Guess what?
If you found Hyunjin tuning his engine, Jisung was sitting on the workbench throwing plastic caps at his head. If Jisung was reviewing track data, Hyunjin was leaning over his shoulder, stealing his snacks. They’ve inevitably grown closer.
Evening. After a brutal, exhausting twelve-hour training day, the track finally fell silent—for once. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting it in a bleeding gradient of deep violet, gold, and soft pink. It was that fleeting moment of dusk where everything felt quiet and still.
Hyunjin stood by the edge of the pit lane, his helmet resting on the concrete wall. He was staring up at the darkening sky, the cool evening breeze catching his hair, a soft, unusually gentle smile on his face.
.
.
OOF!
Out of nowhere, a heavy weight slammed into his back. Jisung tackled him from behind in a clumsy hug, sending them both stumbling forward against the pit wall.
“What are you doing staring into space like a statue?”Jisung laughed, sliding off Hyunjin’s back but keeping an arm hooked around his shoulder. He peered into Hyunjin’s face, teasingly raising an eyebrow. “Why so sentimental, huh? Love at first sight with the sky?”
Hyunjin let out a quiet snicker, rolling his eyes, but he didn’t look away from the horizon. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I mean… look at how the purple just bleeds into the gold at the edge. It looks like watercolor on a wet canvas. It’s like.. the sky is putting on a final show before it goes dark.”
Jisung blinked, staring blankly at the sky, then back at Hyunjin. He let out a loud, dramatic sigh. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, Picasso. It’s just gas and clouds. It’s just the sky.”
“Aish!” Hyunjin jokingly punched Jisung’s arm, hard enough to make him wince. “You just don’t get it, dude. You have zero romance in your soul. All you ever think about or get is winning.”
Jisung scoffed, rubbing his arm, but a subtly fond grin stayed on his face. He didn’t take it to heart because, well, Hyunjin wasn’t wrong.
winning was everything to him.
They walked over to a stack of giant, heavy truck tires huddled outside the garage doors and climbed up, sitting side-by-side with their legs dangling over the rubber. The air was getting colder, the shadows lengthening around them.
“Yah. Jisung-ah.” Hyunjin said softly, his voice dropping into a rare, serious tone.
“Mm?” Jisung mumbled, swinging his legs.
“Let’s get into the same team in the future.” Hyunjin turned his head, his eyes bright and completely earnest in the twilight. “When we make it to the big leagues. Let’s be teammates.”
Jisung froze mid-swing. “…Hm? For real?”
Hyunjin’s brows furrowed slightly, sensing his subtle hesitant tone. “What? You don’t want to?”
“No, it’s not that,” Jisung said quickly, his voice trailing off.
Just for a second, a heavy shadow of doubt crossed Jisung’s mind. He knew how motorsport worked. They were both fiercely talented. They both had massive, unyielding attitudes. If they ended up on the same team, fighting for the exact same championship…
But he shrugged it off with a grin.
“Okay,” Jisung said, bumping his shoulder against Hyunjin’s. “But I’m definitely the cuter driver.”
Hyunjin groaned loudly, rolling his eyes so hard it looked painful. “And? I’m literally the handsomest on the entire circuit, everyone says so.”
“Ha! In your dreams, Hwang!” Jisung yelled, lunging forward to put Hyunjin in a clumsy headlock.
“Eugh! Let go! You smell like gasoline!” Hyunjin shrieked, laughing breathlessly as he fought back, shoving Jisung off the tires.
If you asked anyone at the Namyangju Circuit about twelve-year old Hwang Hyunjin, they would tell you two things: he was EXCEPTIONALLY handsome, and he drove like he was actively trying to bypass the air resistance.
Hyunjin was a complete rookie to the high-level manufacturer junior circuit. He hadn’t been racing since he was in diapers like some of the nepo-babies on the grid, but what he lacked in years of experience, he made up for in pure, terrifying determination. He was a perfectionist to a fault. His knuckles were raw from gripping the steering wheel in the freezing air, and his cheeks were flushed a violent pink beneath his shiny, customized helmet. He had spent the last three hours trying to shave a single tenth of a second off his lap time, throwing his kart into corners with a reckless, dramatic hunger.
“I am going to be the fastest,” Hyunjin thought fiercely, blinking away the stinging wind as he hit the straightaway. “I have to be. I need to be. I will get to that podium. I’ll prove to everyone else!”
He finally finished his stint and pulled his kart into the pit lane, completely intent on storming over to the telemetry screens to gloat over his improved times. He unbuckled his safety harness, threw one long leg over the side of the chassis, and prepared to make a highly dramatic, brooding, cool-guy exit.
He didn’t even get his second foot on the ground.
SCREEEECH— CRASH!
With the absolute grace of a runaway bowling ball, a rogue kart came flying into the pit lane way too fast, locked its brakes, skidded entirely sideways, and slammed directly into the side of Hyunjin’s stationary vehicle.
The impact wasn’t enough to hurt, but it was definitely enough to send a half-unbuckled Hyunjin flying.
DHWACK!
Hyunjin tumbled backward over the edge of his seat, his long legs flailing in the air as he landed flat on his back on the cold, greasy garage floor with a loud, pathetic, decidedly un-cool OOF.
“Oh shit— I’m so sorry! The brakes are sticky! Or the asphalt is weird! It’s definitely 100% the asphalt’s fault!!”
Hyunjin blinked up at the corrugated iron ceiling, his entire soul leaving his body for a second. He scrambled up onto his elbows, glaring daggers through his visor, ready to absolutely DECIMATE whoever had just RUINED his grand exit.
It was Han Jisung.
Now, Hyunjin knew exactly who Han Jisung was. Unlike Hyunjin, who had just arrived this season, Jisung had actually been a staple at this track for over a year. He was one of those veteran kids funded by a legacy racing family. But for the past three days since Hyunjin had joined, Jisung hadn’t spoken a single word to anyone. He was a total lone wolf—completely self oriented, utterly antisocial, and hiding behind a puffy black padded jacket that practically swallowed him whole. Well, at least thats what he is in Hyunjin’s eyes.
He had completely written him off. “Eugh,” Hyunjin had sneered internally on day one. “It’s just another one of those stuck-up nepo baby kids who think he’s too good to talk to the rest of us. He probably gets his karts handed to him on a silver platter.”
But as the helmet came off, the anti-social wallflower had vanished. In his place was a kid with an obnoxious, mile-wide, ever so slightly apologetic but mostly smug grin, his hair sticking up as if he got struck by lightning.
Turns out, the quiet kid just didn’t care about making friends—because his ego was already big enough to keep him company.
“Um.. Are you okay?” Jisung asked, leaning over the side of his kart, looking down at the sprawled-out Hyunjin. “You look kind of like a flipped turtle. But hey! Did you see that turn three line I took before I almost killed us? I literally told the coach—if you don’t break early, you’re literally just bleedibg time. It’s honestly so simple.“
Hyunjin’s teeth ground together so hard his molars ached. He pushed himself off the dirty floor, brushing off his racing suit, his competitive pride flaring into a raging wildfire. “He hits my kart, knocks me onto the floor, then uses the opportunity to brag about his lap times?! The absolute stubborn nerve of this nepo kid!!”
“You got lucky on the exit because the track dried up, Han! And you clearly don’t know how to use a brake pedal!” Hyunjin yelled, stepping forward, his equal ego refusing to back down.
“Luck? And bad braking??” Jisung scoffed, climbing out his kart with zero remorse. He took three aggressive steps forward, stepping right into Hyunjin’s space and matching him inch for inch in pure, stubborn volume.
The atmosphere between them instantly turned heavy—tense, sharp, but crackling with competitive electricity. “That’s called pushing limits, Hwang. Look it up. I’ve been driving this track longer than you’ve even known what a steering wheel is. I’m naturally faster. Just accept it so we can move on with our lives.” Jisung sneered.
“Naturally faster!!???” Hyunjin snapped internally, his chest heaving as he stared down his stubborn, new rival. “Say that again. Get back in the kart. Right now. Let’s go.”
“Oh, THAT’S how it is?? I’ll go!” Jisung yelled back, his eyes flashing with the exact same manic, obsessive hunger for victory that Hyunjin possessed. “But don’t cry when I lap you!”
The truce lasted for all of zero seconds. Instantly, the two twelve-year olds began aggressively shoving and scrambling past each other, yelling and muttering curses into the air as a chaotic mess of elbows and racing suits collided. They both tried to climb back into their respective karts at the exact same time.
“Move your big-foot feet, Hwang! You’re blocking my tire!” Jisung barked loudly, elbowing Hyunjin’s thigh as he aggressively yanked his helmet back over his messy hair.
“You LITERALLY parked your chassis on top of mine!” Hyunjin shrieked back, his voice echoing off the metal rafters, nearly tripping over his own seat.
Hyunjin slammed his hands onto the steering wheel, glaring sideways with pure fire in his eyes. “AT LEAST I DRAG MY KART ACROSS THE FINISH LINE INSTEAD OF DRAGGING MY DADDY’S BLACK CARD, YOU NEPO TRASH!”
Jisung froze mid-adjustment, gasping so loud it sounded like an asthma attack. “WHAT?! OH, YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT TO ME! AT LEAST THE SPONSORS ACTUALLY WANT MY FACE ON A BILLBOARD!! YOU JUST LOOK LIKE— LIKE A STICK BUG IN A JUMPSUIT!”
“STICK BUG?! I AN HIGH FASHION, YOU FASHIONISTIC POSER!” Hyunjin screamed back, slamming his visor down. “I’M GOING TO BRAKE-TEST YOU SO HARD YOUR GRANDKIDS WILL HAVE A WHIPLASH!”
“GOOD LUCK BRAKE-TESTING ME FROM TWO LAPS BEHIND! THE ONLY TROPHY YOU’RE EVER GETTING IS FOR PARTICIPATION, SO DONT CHOKE ON MY DUST WHILE I’M MAKING HISTORY!” Jisung roared back, his voice muffled but dripping with pure, unadulterated, diabolical venom through his helmet.
He didn’t even give Hyunjin half a breath to scream back. He fired up his engines with a loud, deafening roar, completely obliterating the sound of Hyunjin’s incoming speech. He clicked the kart into gear, slammed on the throttle, and flashed a final, incredibly obnoxious sign over his shoulder.
“ENJOY BEING AN NPC, SUCKER!”
With a loud screech of rubber, Jisung tore out the pit lane and back onto the track.
“Wh—?! HEY!” Hyunjin yelled back, thoroughly offended and fuming in his wake.
“Eugh.. Stupid nepo-babies..!”
a.n:
if this gets enough attention i’ll continue… its all just for fun don’t take it seriously 🥶
if you’re wondering what Im basing their dynamic from (aside from the whole predebut dynamic)….. brocedes………..
F1 fans know 😹
and for all my friends reading this…. ive been hiding this since last year fyi pls take care of me imnida!!
actually this was initially a joke but now its just too fun
